Learner Engagement: Instructional screencasting

I used Quicktime to record this Screencast.

Ideally, I would have included some mini quizzes throughout (it’s only 6 mins) to test understanding. I don’t have any of the fancy Abode authoring programs, and I’m aware of some cheaper/free versions, but I was in a bit of a rush. If I were to try one, it would be iSpring Suite. iSpring has the most features, including flash, character library and mobile app or off-line access. It’s a hefty $700, but I would invest in it once I get the ball rolling on this new career adventure.

I have used this feature before in the classroom. I flipped my classroom for an intro business course on Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. I found teaching the girls how to complete their rather dry assignments (I did not design them!) extremely tedious. Their expertise was in how to use their mobiles to edit images and videos, and not how to use MS Office for educational documentation, much less business documentation! The learning curve was steep for them. I recorded a couple of videos for the hardest assignments, uploaded them, and they were able to watch the videos on their own, multiple times, and then only approach me when they ran into a snag. We got so much more done this way. As far as I know, no one else had thought of this. We’d always been hammered with “differentiation!!!” but to me, flipping the classroom is one of the most successful differentiated learning techniques ever.

What I learned then and remembered again this time, was that you really need to memorize (or note) the steps you take so your delivery is smooth. It’s embarrassing clicking the wrong thing expecting X but then getting Y. I would flip my classroom again, particularly for adult staff training purposes.